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Isn’t One Murdered Child Enough?

by lewwaters

After the brutal murder of 13 year-old Alycia Nipp, allegedly at the hands of a convicted Level III sex offender, released under a policy of monitoring him with a GPS tracking device on his person, we might think that legislators would open their eyes to the folly of their ways in this policy and do something to keep these predators off of our streets.

When it comes to many of our Legislators in Olympia, Washington, nothing could be further from the truth it seems.

As Republicans representing Washington State try to pass legislation to keep these predators in prisons longer or add measures to keep them off of our streets and away from our children, the Democrat majority in the Legislature consistently opposes measures calling for stiffer sentences and stricter measures on their release.

Senator Don Benton tried without success to pass a version of “Jessica’s Law” in 2006 in Washington State. His bill died in the Judiciary Committee.

After the murder of Alycia Nipp here in Clark County, Benton again tried to introduce an amendment to another sex offender bill, only to see it blocked by the imposition of Parliamentary Procedures by Debbie Regala, D-Tacoma and upheld by Lieutenant Governor Brad Owen, also a Democrat.

Currently, Senator Benton has introduced another bill, SB 6115, enhancing penalties for and monitoring of sex offenders. Even though introduced after the cut-off date for bills to pass out of committee, Benton vows to fight for its passage anyway.

I give special credit to Senator Tim Sheldon of the 35th Legislative District for being the lone Democrat to step up and co-sponsor this piece of legislation.

Representative Jan Angel, Republican from Port Orchard also tried to introduce her bill in response to the brutal murder of Alycia Nipp. HB 1834 was not even given a hearing!

Representative Angel said,

“We have an opportunity to protect vulnerable citizens with new, effective technology, and yet the majority party completely ignores this legislation”

Personally, I don’t feel her bill went far enough, but is a step closer to doing what we must to keep our children safer and stop those we know will most likely re-offend from having easy access to them.

Although Alycia and her family reside in the 49th Legislative District, neither of our Democrat Representatives, Jim Moeller or Jim Jacks, signed on to co-sponsor this effort.

And again, I give credit to those few Democrats who went against their party and co-sponsored this bill, even though it did not even receive a hearing.

Most disturbing was seeing that within days of Alycia’s murder and the arrest of the transient Level III sex offender accused and confessed in her murder, our legislature, including Sen. Craig Pridemore in who’s district the murder happened, voted for a bill to ease restrictions on some sex offenders.

SB 5288 passed in the Senate by a 38 to 8 vote by a bi-partisan vote, leading me to believe many see it as a cost cutting measure. Surely the safety of our children and protecting them from sexual predators would be more important than other areas receiving taxpayer funds, but it doesn’t appear so.

The bill is before the House currently, so we will see where their priorities lie.

Throughout America, websites are popping under the guise of Citizens for Change that also distort sex offender laws and call for easing of restrictions on so called lesser offenders or those that have not been caught re-offending for a certain period of time.

They throw up a smoke screen by always mentioning those few cases where teens are caught up in offender cases or other cases considered minimal, by them. One even once told me that stronger laws “do more harm than good!” I wonder who is harmed more by stiffer penalties for these repeat offenders?

One such supporter of easing restrictions once said to me, “the vast majority of sex offenders on Tier three are no threat to anyone.” Just how we are supposed to tell that before another child is murdered is left unsaid and unanswered.

While many may be well meaning, although misguided in my opinion, they cloud the issue of repeat offenders who eventually murder someone, all too often a child.

Missed is that nearly every one of those repeat offenders and murderers also began their spree in what these people consider “lesser crimes” that even they would ease restrictions on.

Statistically, maybe most don’t end up murdering a child, but again, how is it to be determined which ones will eventually murder and which won’t? Why must we wait until another child is murdered to find out?

In the case of the bill to ease restrictions above, six months without re-offending is considered acceptable. With guidelines such as that, Westley Allen Dodd would have qualified for easing of restrictions that were instituted after his rampage of murdering three children here in Clark County in 1989.

Would you be comforted to know that the one who murdered your child, “statistically was no threat?”

How did we as a society, become so cavalier as to take on the attitude of a Department of Corrections official, who in regards to Alycia’s death said, “Tragic as it is, these things happen.” How is it our legislators can sleep at night knowing they have the power and ability to keep these predators off of our streets and out of our neighborhoods, yet block actions to do so?

One murdered child is one too many in my estimation. It is high time we citizens identify which legislators place criminals above our children’s safety and vote them out next election. We citizens must hold our elected officials responsible and if they will not carry out our will, vote in others who will.

And you persist on throwing up your smoke screen obscuring what I am writing about, KNOWN LEVEL III OFFENDERS MOST LIKELY TO HARM AGAINI!!!!!!

You fight for easing restrictions on so called lesser offenders without any acknowledgment that every single major offender once was also a “lesser offender.”

Your “studies” are suspect as are your intentions. You dedicate a mere few words saying you are against those that cause severe harm, then engage in a litany of words advocating leniency for so called lesser offenders, obscuring my call for harsher sentencing on those who have caused harm and will most likely do it again.

One dead child at the hands of one of these animals trumps any studies you embrace!

And again, I will remind you that it must be very comforting to Alycia’s family that by your account, statistically, her murderer posed no threat to anyone.

God, how do you sleep at night?

Have you no conscience at all?

Have you no heart at all?

You say you agree that one child dead is one too many, but what help or condolences do you offer? NONE!

The problem is that Alyssia Nipp was not the first young girl to be murdered here in Vancouver by a sex offender who was supposed to be under supervision. Have we already forgotten about David Sullivan and his cold-blooded murder of Anna Svidersky??

But how does a level 3 sex offender be outfitted with a GPS bracelet and released into the community, when he is transient by choice, and is known to be squatting in an abandoned house? It’s a travesty that the GPS bracelet will serve to prove that Sanford really was in the field where he murdered Alyssia Nipp.

“David Barton Sullivan was first diagnosed as a schizophrenic at age 6. By the time he stabbed Anna Svidersky that night in Vancouver, he’d had a number of run-ins with the law, stays in mental hospitals, and tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. He had been prescribed the antipsychotic medication Risperdal and the antidepressant Prozac by his physician at Kaiser Permanente, but it is not clear if he was compliant in taking his medication.

Sullivan attempted to kidnap a 14-year-old girl from a gymnastics center in 2001.

Due to his schizophrenia, he spent 90 days in a mental hospital under evaluation. He was found competent. Sullivan stood trial then and was convicted of “unlawful imprisonment for a sexual motivation.”

Sullivan served 90 days in prison.

When he murdered Anna Svidersky on April 20, 2006, he was living with his parents.

Sullivan could not be found in a search made of the sex offender registry for offenders in Clark County or Vancouver two days after his arrest. A search for Sullivan via the U.S. Dept. of Justice website, http://www.nsopr.gov, yielded a result showing his full name and county of residence, but on clicking Sullivan’s name through that site, no full record could be found, only an error page for the Washington registry.

This begged the question: did Sullivan’s being arrested again somehow implement his swift removal from the current registry, or was he to be found there in the first place?

Was there any way the community could have known a man so randomly dangerous was living in their midst?

The question being asked by Anna Svidersky’s many friends and family, by many citizens in Vancouver, WA, was most likely the most obvious one why was Sullivan free to roam about at all, much less with a 6-inch steak knife in hand?”

Get your ex back, I just browse news service or local events for this blog and write what articles hit me hardest. In the case of Alycia Nipp, she was murdered within 2 blocks of my home and that made it more personal to me.

I am involved with the local Republican Party and began immediately contacting all of my representatives from both parties.

I am very disappointed that the Democrats who represent my district continue to block efforts at stricter controls over these known re-offenders who apparently just roam freely around my neighborhood, monitored only by a GPS device on their ankle.

I have no given up and intend to be a continual thorn in politicians side until some measures are passed to make murdering children like Alycia much more difficult.

I was abducted, beaten and raped by a stranger. It wasn’t a neighbor, a coach, a relative, a family friend or teacher. It was a recidivist pedophile predator who spent time in prison for previous sex crimes; an animal hunting for victims in the quiet, bucolic, suburban neighborhoods of Lincoln, Rhode Island.
I was able to identify the guy and the car he was driving. Although he was arrested that night and indicted a few months later, he never went to trial. His trial never took place because he was brutally beaten to death in Providence before his court date. 34 years later, no one has ever been charged with the crime.

In the time between the night of my assault and the night he was murdered, I lived in fear. I was afraid he was still around town. Afraid he was looking for me. Afraid he would track me down and kill me. The fear didn’t go away when he was murdered. Although he was no longer a threat, the simple life and innocence of a 14-year-old boy was gone forever. Carefree childhood thoughts replaced with the unrelenting realization that my world wasn’t a safe place. My peace shattered by a horrific criminal act of sexual violence.

Over the past 34 years, I’ve been haunted by horrible, recurring memories of what he did to me. He visits me in my sleep. There have been dreams–nightmares actually–dozens of them, sweat inducing, yelling-in-my-sleep nightmares filled with images and emotions as real as they were when it actually happened. It doesn’t get easier over time. Long dead, he still visits me, silently sneaking up from out of nowhere when I least expect it. From the grave, he sits by my side on the couch every time the evening news reports a child abduction or sex crime. I don’t watch America’s Most Wanted or Law and Order SVU, because the stories are a catalyst, triggering long suppressed emotions, feelings, memories, fear and horror. Real life horror stories rip painful suppressed memories out from where they hide, from that recessed place in my brain that stores dark, dangerous, horrible memories. It happened when William Bonin confessed to abducting, raping and murdering 14 boys in California; when Jesse Timmendequas raped and murdered Megan Kanka in New Jersey; when Ben Ownby, missing for four days, and Shawn Hornbeck, missing for four years, were recovered in Missouri.

Despite what happened that night and the constant reminders that continue to haunt me years later, I wouldn’t change what happened. The animal that attacked me was a serial predator, a violent pedophile trolling my neighborhood in Lincoln, Rhode Island looking for young boys. He beat me, raped me, and I stayed alive. I lived to see him arrested, indicted and murdered. It might not have turned out this way if he had grabbed one of my friends or another kid from my neighborhood. Perhaps he’d still be alive. Perhaps there would be dozens of more victims and perhaps he would have progressed to the point of silencing his victims by murdering them.

Out of fear, shame and guilt, I’ve been silent for over three decades, sharing with very few people the story of what happened to me. No more. The silence has to end. The fear, the shame, the guilt have to go. It’s time to stop keeping this secret from the people closest to me, people I care about, people I love, my long-time friends and my family. It’s time to speak out to raise public awareness of male sexual assault, to let other victims know that they’re not alone and to help victims of rape and violent crime understand that the emotion, fear and memories that may still haunt them are not uncommon to those of us who have shared a similar experience. For those who suffer in silence, I hope my story brings some comfort, strength, peace and hope.

Men in My Town is the story of my abduction, beating and rape and the unsolved brutal murder of the man who attacked me.